


Michani

by Lizzy_Lizard



Series: The Polem Series [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Adventure, F/M, Friendship, Lol these tags make it sound cheesy, Sibling Bonding, Steampunk, i swear it’s not, tribes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2020-03-30 21:00:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19035520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lizzy_Lizard/pseuds/Lizzy_Lizard
Summary: Lavinia was always going to be a warrior, but was she really ever a hero? When a lost fight turns her life upside down she thinks that there is no way anything could get worse. She was wrong about a lot of things.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [My sister Taylor](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=My+sister+Taylor).



> This is an original work that I’ve been wanting to post for a long time. If anyone is reading this, I hope you enjoy!

To Taylor, who keeps me in a permanent RUSH of excitement

 

“And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it, neither brave man nor coward, I tell you - it’s born with us the day that we are born.”  
― Homer, The Iliad

 

Lavinia sits at a table, a cold black pen clutched tightly in her hand. The wind blows through the open window, traveling quickly through the small room lit only by candlelight. It chills her to the bone and a hard shiver comes up her spine. Lavinia gets up to shut the window, and as she pulls the shutters they slam into each other. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Topaz jump at the sound. Topaz hadn’t always been jumpy, but the explosion ensured that she would be from now on.

Lavina sighs at the sameness. The way that nothing ever changes. Everyone she met had had a vision of a better world. It was like looking out a window, they could see the future they wanted so clearly, but when they reached out to touch it, all they felt was cold, flat glass. Lavina is convinced now that the future everyone desired died with Olive. Still giving up now makes her feel empty, just a shell of a girl who had once worked so hard to become rock solid, and that’s nearly the worst feeling she has ever felt. Lavinia takes a shaking breath and sits back down at her table. It’s late, she should be getting to bed. Still she sits, thinking, wishing, but never hoping.

She had forgotten the taste of hope, the delicious sweetness that slowly lost its flavor when more and more bitterness was added to her life. The memories of hope were the only things that lingered, their brightness dimmed by the fact that they were nothing but a dead end.

Lavinia wishes people would realize that the world wasn’t just handed over to the Trace. Part of her wants people to be inspired to try to rise up against the world that they live in, but the other part of her hopes no one will. It would probably only destroy them, like it destroyed her and everyone else locked in the prison of a home that they knew they could never leave.

She sits for another fifteen minutes, staring at the empty table in front of her. She feels blank, since the Trace took over words have filled her head and then suddenly vanished leaving a ghostly emptiness that she was forced to fill with longing. She wants her friends back, herself back, she wants the world back.

The candlelight dances around and she stares into the flame, hoping that maybe it will give her some of the answers that she wants. It only mocks her when it dances, looking too happy for its own good. She used to worry that the candle would bother Topaz, but Lavinia knows now that the light actually comforts her.

Topaz is sitting on top of her bedroll in the corner of the tiny room, her head rested against the wooden wall. The other bedroll laid out across the floor belongs to Lavina, but she never uses it. She always finds herself falling asleep with a book in hand, or not falling asleep all. It seems she’s been doing this for weeks now, maybe even months. Lavinia can barely keep track of the dates anymore, but she knows that the tribes went into hiding around four years ago.

It is hard to confront her memories when she knows they will only lead to more longing, more despair, more hopeless wishing. Sometimes her mind wanders to the beginning, sometimes somewhere in the middle. The story of how she ended up like this has never been one she could know and feel, and think of alone. So many of her friends had been hurt, so many good people were gone, all for what? Lavinia looks down again at her hands, listening to the sounds of her brothers quietly talking in the next room over. They and Topaz always remind her that she isn’t the only one feeling lost. It seems strange though, that back so long ago, when she knew nothing, she thought she knew exactly where she was.


	2. Test

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to the people that have looked at this book, honestly I didn’t think anyone would. In this chapter we get some action. I hope you like it! Also, on another note, the rest of the book takes place five years before the prologue.

Lavinia was born a Polem.

When she was born, the medic found a mark on her right arm. A red circle with a white line down the middle, and two blue diamonds on the sides. The symbol may have looked hollow or unimportant, like a useless tattoo. Her mark was anything but hollow and unimportant. Everything she did for the first fourteen years of her life, revolved around that symbol. It was everything she was, and it was everything she’d ever be. At least that’s what Lavinia thought.

The day her life started to change was a cold shadow of a day that all Polems fear. The day of the final test. The day that showed if you were worthy of the symbol you had. Lavinia had been trained for twelve long years. Taken from her house when I she two, only to be sent to an academy of sorts. It was a place to take the children with the mark of the Polem, and raise them to be the warriors that the king had requested. Not the current king , or even the king before him. It was seventy five years ago that the marks took over the world. Most people didn’t think about them as symbols that had more power than the king himself but that’s what they were.

So one cloudy day on the darkened streets of Roloi, Lavinia walked into the large building stationed in the middle of town. The people of the streets, upper class and factory workers alike called it the crystal ball for two reasons. One, because of its glassy dome that marked the heart of city, and two because it was the place that determined the future of the Polems. Not that Lavinia was too worried about her future like all of the other Polems were. She was like ice. She was cold and unforgiving, and she tried to freeze her future into place, not knowing that it could melt away. She thought with a confidence that could not be bested that she would graduate best in her class, get sent an assignment to fight against the wicked Trace, complete that assignment without blinking an eye, and be known as a hero for the rest of her life. She had always had dreams to fight, but it wasn’t for something that she believed in, or even for something that someone she cared about believed in. Why would it be? She didn’t care about anyone but herself, In fact, that was the reason she wanted to fight. She wanted every household to speak her name. She wanted the king to congratulate her, and the Queen to put a medal around her neck. She wanted money and power and she was happy to be a Polem because she thought that all of those things would be given to her on a silver platter just for having an interesting birthmark on her shoulder.

The world had seemed on edge the day of the test. It was cold outside because it was getting to be the peak of winter, and though the country of Koloi sat in a desert where it neglected to snow It tended to get very, very chilly. However, when Lavinia opened the heavy onyx doors to the crystal ball she became warm again. She walked through the hallway, overhearing the men and women that came to watch as they spoke her name.

“That’s the girl,” Said one woman in a ruffled, light brown dress with lace on the sleeves. She had her shiny black hair in a bun with pieces of hair hanging down in front of the ears and curled into ringlets. Her face was tight and you could tell that she was judgmental. She had come to see someone fight and fight well. She had come to see Lavinia. “ I heard that she’s top of her class.” The woman continued to whisper to a man that was sitting next to her. He was in a black coat. You could barely see the shirt underneath it because he had such a slouch that it looked like he was sinking into himself. Lavinia couldn’t see his eyes beneath the brim of his hat until he looked up at her in response to what the woman had said.

Lavinia looked at him with a face that she had been practicing. It was a proud, almost regal face. It said that she was important, and it was supposed to make them feel special that they had had the privilege to look at her. It wasn’t a smile, but more a glint in the eyes, and a nod of the head. Lavinia’s mouth went slightly tighter with the edges just going up a little bit. He responded with a face that held something like awe. That was her payoff. She got what she wanted and now it was time to pursue the bigger challenge.

Lavinia touched the smooth metal walls as she walked into the dressing room. They were cold, but it was a nice kind of cold. It was a kind that always stayed the same. She knew her life would change after this day, but she was sure that it would go up in a steady pattern. Every day would be filled with rewards. Every day would be better than the last. At the time it seemed that a hero would be the only thing she could be. It was the only thing she wanted, and the only thing she worked towards. 

She walked into the dressing room, looking at all of her competition with the same face she had given the man in the hallway. They looked back at Lavinia with eyes that showed fear she didn’t know she could ignite in a person. It made her feel proud. Though Lavinia’s confidence never wavered, the other Polems had plenty of reason to fear the final test. The Polems that didn’t do well on the test would be used as pawns. The Koloinne empire didn’t care if they were killed, they didn’t care if everything was taken away from them. The only purpose they had was to distract the enemy. Though they didn’t know their exact future, it was easy to predict: sent out at fourteen to die in a war they knew nothing about.

Lavinia sauntered into a stall in no hurry to get into her fighting gear. She was the last one up, which she believed was because she was the best. When behind the curtain, Lavinia changed out of my plain brown skirt and laced white top, and into her grandiose fighting gear. Polems were dressed to impress. She wore a light iron corset painted gold over a black lace top with light silver metal going around her neck and sitting atop her shoulders, held in place by black leather bands wrapped just below her shoulders. A fluffy lace skirt flowed out from under her corset and, ended in a leather hem just above her knees. Lavinia’s outfit was not made to be easy to move in, just good looking, and many Polem’s were beyond wondering what the designers were thinking, although Lavinia had been too focused on the fight to wonder.

She walked out of the stall and watched as her competitors went outside into the test arena. She couldn’t help but see every weakness inside of them as the looked at the door that would take them into the arena. Naturally she saw no weakness in herself… that was her weakness.

Finally it got to Lavinia’s turn. She shut her eyes and took a deep breath, then opened them, irises lighting up like a match. The doorknob felt warm on her hand, and when she turned it the feeling of adrenaline started to fill up every corner of her soul. She was suddenly chilled when she got into the cold arena. It was like a seperate world in there. At least two hundred people howled and cheered in the gigantic circle of seats above the arena floor. They were up so high Lavinia could hardly see them, but they could see her. They could see almost every angle of the course she would be going on as well. Every angle that is, except for the small black metal shack that stood right in the middle of the arena. It was nothing but a simple box, walls black walls blocking the view inside, but it was the most important thing in this competition, only because of the small wooden circle it held within the mysterious darkness..

Knowing that she was being timed, Lavinia started to run. She ran faster and faster, dodging automata that circled around her. Their metallic faces were so clear to her. There bodies were thin metal covered in leavers and gears, nothing like a real human form. Their heads looked like a metal sphere that had been stretched to be more like an oval. From around their heads steam spat out like unruly hair. Over top of their heads was a metal face. Neither man nor woman and yet, it was so realistic it looked almost like the metal had been placed over a real human’s face and then molded itself into that shape. The only thing that wasn’t humanlike about it was it’s stillness, it looked like it was dead yet still up and moving. There was no emotion in its expression, only hard cold metal. All of the automata were identical: same face, same weapons, same fighting style (if you could call it a style). The automata in the arena were like ghosts, unfeeling and cold.

There were three walls encircling the shack, each built out of a different kind of metal, each larger than the last, each only there to get in her way. As Lavinia made it to the first wall, she stepped back a bit, then took a running start. She jumped as high as she could, feeling herself being lifted off the ground by her own strength. Lavinia felt so bold up in the air like that, she felt like there was no possible way that she could ever do anything wrong. What she figured was that if someone thought that she had done something wrong, they just needed to change their opinion because clearly she hadn’t. Lavinia hit the ground gracefully, one leg out to the side, the other one bent in front of her, and her hand lightly touching the ground. 

She knew that the next wall would be harder but nothing she couldn’t handle. Polems had been trained on courses similar to this one, and had been able to come and study this one from the stands once, so Lavinia knew what she was doing. She always knew what she was doing. She adjusted her skirt and continued on, taking out two automata on her way to the second wall. It was much higher than she remembered it, and for a second she felt something like fear pass through her. Jumping this wall would be a lot more difficult, the Polems were told they would have resources that would help them get over the third wall, but nothing for the second. For just a minute Lavinia wished that she had friends who could have told her what the course was like after their turn. She sighed and ran back preparing for the jump. Then she ran forward with everything inside of her, jumping as high as she possibly could. She felt her hand hit the top of the wall, stinging just a bit as she latched on with all of her strength, pulling her body up and over the side of the wall. When Lavinia landed back down she felt hot and tired and for the first time she wanted to rip her corset off, but she continued. 

This area was one ridden with automata. That was more of an annoyance than a problem, only because they got in the way of Lavinia’s quest to reach the base of the third wall. 

One came at her, it’s stiff arm zooming towards her head. It was always strange that their facial expressions never matched with what they were doing. Lavinia ducked the punch, reaching up and grabbing the metallic arm, and swinging the contraption and a group of four or five more that were closing in on her. A few of them collapsed quickly, though two got back up. As they charged at Lavinia she dodged their attempts at getting her in the stomach, and then again in the face, without breaking a sweat. She swung her leg up against one, knocking it into the other, then pounced on them like a hungry panther, leaving them in a heap when she was done. It was really too easy.

Lavinia had taken out all of them before she reached the base, and she had left their metallic corpses piled up by the wall. They were such junk, nothing but scrap metal. When she got to the base she looked around frantically for the resources her instructors mentioned to us a week ago. There was nothing in front of her so she quickly ran around the circumference of the wall. There was nothing, and now she was tired out from running. She took a deep breath and remembered that the other Polems had to go through the same thing, and that they probably did far worse than she was doing. 

Lavinia closed her eyes, trying to think of all of the things that she could get her hands on right now. There was nothing there but her, the wall, and the automata. The automata. Now, Lavinia still thought they were complete junk, but at that moment there was nothing more helpful to her than a bunch of scrap metal on the ground. 

It made sense to her that this particular area was so crowded with them. She quickly picked one up, feeling it’s lifeless face with my hand. She looked over its body for a way to connect it to some of the other automata and sure enough there was a type of connector on its back, shoulders, knees lower back, and right ankle. Lavinia started looking around the wall for a place that she could hook them up to. Just about as far away from the heap of automata as possible was a place where tiny holes were put on the wall in the shape of a triangle. She started stacking the automata and hooking them into place to look like a sort of human pyramid. When she got high enough, she ran up their backs and jumped the small distance over the side of the wall. 

When Lavinia hit the ground there was nothing left to do but retrieve the artifact. Once she had it in her hand and walked out of the shack the test would be over, and the walls would lower into the ground to allow her to pass. She hurried into the shack and was surprised to see that this was the only place where the once wooden floor of the arena showed. In the center of the shack was a small table, and on it a shiny metal disk. She reached out her hand to the artifact but before she could pick it up, she heard a small creek from behind her. It was an innocent enough noise, but she turned around anyway to see what it was. That’s when she was pinned to the ground by a man that wounded her with one shot from his eyes.

She recognized him immediately. “Y-you’re Kovid,” Lavinia murmured, still too shocked to realize that a member of the Twisted Trace was pinning her down at the very end of her trial. He stepped off of her, and she felt her body freeze, though her mind was screaming for her to do something, she couldn’t move.

“You won’t hurt me…” was all she could say before she noticed what was in his hand. He pulled a small, thick bladed dagger from his belt and for a second Lavinia thought that she had it, he couldn’t bring her down with a dagger. she must have been so much better than him, she could feel it, feel motivation boiling up in her blood. Her Polem blood. 

Then he turned his thumb along a notch in the handle of his gold and silver dagger and it began to move. It felt hot and damp, the room had smelled rotten, like someone had died there. Lavinia could see the man, the wicked man in front of her, his eyes looked red in the light. His grey-blonde hair shined and glinted, and not one small piece of it fell from its place on his head. His skin was so pale, that it was almost translucent. And his face, so calm, so confident, but the treachery still so apparent. There was a fire burning behind his stonelike features, and Lavinia knew, even then that his spiteful fire would bring her down to the point where she would never be the same again.

She heard clicking noises coming from the blade in his hand, and saw it grow. It grew thinner and longer, she could see gold gears turning in and out of the moving silver blades that finally clicked in the long, elegant form of a sword. She had never seen a weapon like that. The edges almost glowed in a beautiful amber luminescence.

Maybe in some other world she could have taken him down then. She could have ran out or made a better attempt at killing him, but unfortunately she didn’t do anything. All she did was make a poor attempt to get up. She could feel her body shaking, her heart pounding so hard she wondered if Kovid would hear it. Try to fight! She heard her conscience say. Without thinking first she tried to kick him, her heavy boot headed for his stomach. Her leg seemed to take hours to travel through the air, and it seemed like days as Kovid stepped out of the way and swung the blade, slicing off her leg in one elegantly painful moment.

Lavinia’s life changed right then. Everything she knew, or thought she knew was thrown into the machinery of a factory. It was warped and broken, mangled by a single second. The second that started every horrible thing that would ever happen to her.

She fell to the floor in a knot of pain and blood. Lavinia was unable to bring her eyes to look at him, but she knew the smugness on his face was there. The pride, the feeling that no one was more important than him. All she could feel was herself, being torn apart by the thin, horrible strings of agony, slowly ripping away at everything she had known and felt. The blood that had been so sure was now spilling on the floor in oceans, and sulking in heaps of shame on her clothes. For a second her mind seemed to create the delusion that he was the one caked with blood, that she had literally ripped his smug features off of his face. Lavinia sobbed suddenly and realized that none of it was true, and the pain increased tenfold. It felt like she would dry up eventually, like she would either run out of too much blood or too many tears to live.

Her thoughts that had once been calm were now screaming like wild animals in her head, Why hasn’t he killed you yet? She could only think of one reason: Watching her suffer was his utmost joy and pleasure. Lavinia’s voice came out in a faint strained whisper, “Please, please just kill me.” That was all she could say before her world flickered and turned to black, like the sunset had sped up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you liked this chapter, I’m glad! As you may have guessed this is the “lost fight” I referred to in the description. Comment if you enjoyed or if you hated it, I really don’t care as long as it’s feedback.


	3. Mechanical

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some new characters come into the mix in this chapter. I hope you like it.

Lavinia woke up in a poorly lit hospital room, and as her eyes painfully lifted she expected to be alone, but she was already forming a pattern of never getting what she expected. What she saw in front of her instead, was two boys who looked to be about twelve and, upon looking at them closer, were twins. She hadn’t seen twins that much in her life, when she was five, two of the graduating Polems were twins, but she hadn’t seen many besides that. Even though she hadn’t seen them that much in her life though, she was smart enough to know that most of the time they looked exactly the same. 

That was not the case with these two. The first was lanky for a twelve year old, and had greasy longish hair that hung awkwardly over the tops of his ears. He had large spectacles that, though they were transparent, had a sort of greenish-yellowish tint to them. Lavinia had never seen anything like them on a child. Mostly elderly people had bad vision and had to wear those ridiculous things, but if this boy did, she figured he could barely see at all. He wore a button up shirt that she assumed had once been white, but now was a brownish grey color, caked with dirt. He also had a jacket with sleeves that were much too short, so that the sleeves to his shirt poofed out stupidly at his wrists. What Lavinia gathered from this boy's ungainly appearance was that obviously, he was not the favorite child.

His brother however, looked much, much nicer. He was the same height as the first brother, but he made it work, he wore a nice jacket, that was almost as formal as the coats that some of the gentlemen were wearing when they came to the final Polem test. His hair was nicely combed to one side, and his facial features, while they were the same as his brother’s, looked much more appealing because of the lack of his sibling’s ridiculous glasses. 

When Lavinia asked these strange boys why they were in her hospital room the one with the poor appearance replied, “Well, we’ve been wanting to see you all month really.”

Obviously this only created more questions. Lavinia decided to just let them talk and see what she could figure out from what they said. She nodded to the more good looking one, but the other spoke. “You see, we found out when we were little that you were a Polem, so now that we’re twelve we decided that we really wanted to work where we could help you in some way.”

“So,” the other one said, “We’re dishwashers in the cafeteria! I mean, I guess you won’t be eating there anymore, because you just graduated but…”

“Sshh!” The one with the spectacles said, putting his finger to his lip, “We don’t know if she graduated or not, and you probably shouldn’t say she did, because I’m pretty sure she didn’t.” He spoke in a raspy whisper that Lavinia guessed he assumed she couldn’t hear, but she could. Every word. 

“Who are you?” She suddenly shouted. She wanted to punch them. Both of them. Of course she graduated, she was the best in her class. It wasn’t her fault a Trace member came out of nowhere.

Lavinia expected them to look scared, or at least intimidated like her fellow Polems did when she spoke. They just looked confused. “Did, we forget to tell you who we are?” The one with the spectacles asked.

Lavinia just looked at them coldly, expecting them to get the message through her expression. They didn’t. 

“Well, um…” the better looking one said, “My name is Derek, and this is my brother Howard. We’re um…”

Lavinia narrowed her eyes, “Spit it out.”

“We’re your brothers,” the other brother finished.

Lavinia didn’t look remotely surprised. The ice in her face refused to melt. She didn’t really ever think about family. It wasn’t something she valued. Neither was friendship. Her ultimate goal was to fight the Trace and become a hero, and family and friends were obstacles in her way. She knew that there was a possibility that she might have siblings, although the thought never interested her. Why should she care. She was a Polem, and the only thing she needed to know was that she remembered her training for when she graduated.

Lavinia figured they expected her to be shocked or surprised or at least something, because Derek then repeated, “Your brothers,” and as if she was stupid, proceeded to describe to her exactly what had happened in their family. “Mother had you, you were taken, mother had us, we got older, and she told us about you.”

Lavinia let out a sigh and told herself to stay patient with them. Putting on a fake smile she stated quickly, “Well you are very lucky then, not many people are related to Polems.”

They agreed, then continued to talk about useless things which she paid no attention to. She didn’t care, she felt much too important to listen to them. Dirty kitchen boys who thought they were related to her? They may have been her brothers by blood, but she was a Polem, and they were dishwashers, which took away their right to call her their sister.

As Howard and Derek went on, the door opened and Lavinia looked up to see Olive walk in. Lavinia and her had known each other for years, the two people with no friends. This, however didn’t make Lavinia feel close to Olive either. She hated how pitiful she looked while Olive stood gracefully in front of her, with her chocolate brown hair, tan skin and navy blue eyes.

Lavinia looked at Olive with disgust. She hated her. Hated how she was always trying to be Ms. Perfect all the time. She was four years older than Lavinia, and she assumed this made her think she had the right to boss Lavinia around. Her hair was always up in a loose bun in the back of her head. It had pins and ribbons placed in spots carefully chosen by her hairdressers. She was a princess… sort of. Her father was dead, her mother a member of the Trace, and it was wildly theorized that her mother killed her father. Lavinia believed it and at this point and even Olive believed that it was a possibility. After her father died Olive was taken in by her uncle, the King . She seemed like a spoiled goody two shoes to most people, and Lavinia told herself that she was much better than her. 

“Oh, Vini you’re awake!” Olive said excitedly in her disgustingly perfect way.

Lavinia narrowed her eyes and nodded, trying to give her the message that she didn’t want her in the room. She pretended not to notice. “I was so worried about you!” She continued. 

It felt like her hatred was going to boil over, but she took a deep breath and tried to say something that wasn’t terrible. “You had no need to be. I’m fine.” Lavinia stated in a cold tone. Her face felt hot and sweaty, and she tried to slow her breathing, which was quickly speeding up. Get out. She thought. She wanted to be alone, she wanted to sit here and forget the whole test day ever happened. Forget the intense pain that lingered where her leg should be, forget that everyone who had been watching was probably talking the incident up like crazy now, forget that she now had to deal with two more people besides Olive, who seemed to follow her around no matter what. 

“I just,” she mumbled, and Lavinia could almost see tears in her eyes, “I just wanted to make sure you were okay!” Then she hugged her. It made Lavinia stiff and uncomfortable, like she had always been when Olive had acted like her friend.

“Get out.” She hissed, unable to hold it back anymore. Olive looked back at her with little surprise. Olive had no friends, she never had, this was the closest thing she had to friendship and she didn’t know that it could ever be any different. No one had ever really loved her. She was a nuisance to the King and Queen, a hindrance to the staff at the castle, and an annoyance to Lavinia. Everyone wanted her to go away. 

“Okay,” she replied, with only a touch of sadness in her voice, “I’ll go, but Vini?” Lavinia cringed at the use of her nickname. She had never liked it, never agreed to her Olive using it on her, but despite that she still did.

“Ugh, what?” Lavinia grunted in response.

“Um, my uncle said he wishes to see you, um tonight,” with that she gave a small grin, and as she walked out the door she said in a slightly happier voice, “Something about your first mission.”

All of Lavinia’s annoyance went away in a flash. As Olive left, she found herself sitting up in her hospital bed, and yelling at the medic, “When am I going to be able to get out of this stupid room!”

The medic came rushing in carrying a bundle of fabric, Lavinia could see a small piece of red metal peeking out the side, it shined in an intriguing way that sent a shiver down her spine. In all the excitement she forgot that her brothers were still in the room. 

“What’s that?” Howard asked, running his fingers through his greasy hair. 

Derek rested his elbow on his brother’s shoulder and looked up at the medic. She had blonde hair, carefully twisted back in the most precise of manners. Her eyes were small and squinted, encased in enormous amounts of makeup. Derek smiled up at her with what Lavinia could only guess was a confused expression. It was actually a smolder. A twelve year old’s smolder. “Sweetness?” he asked the medic, a hint of a smile going across his lips. One eyebrow raised as he inquired, “What’s that you’re carrying, it must be something wonderful to be held in your grasp.”

Lavinia vomited a little in her mouth after hearing that. Surprisingly, she looked flattered and replied in a sweet but shaky voice, “Well, it’s something they made for your sister, and,” she looked at the said sister awkwardly, fearing the piercing glare on her face, “and I hope she likes it.”

Lavinia was sure she wouldn’t like it, and when she unwrapped the cloth to reveal a mechanical leg she didn’t. It was like a sick confirmation. They can walk around with normal limbs and she would have to be part automaton. She hated the idea of seeing everyone look so similar, and her having to be so different. Usually she liked being different. She liked feeling like she was above other people, but this? This was a symbol, it told people that she lost a fight. The second they saw her they would know her worst failure. It was like her loss was on display for everyone she walked past. 

 

Lavinia was sure the medic could see her disapproval. “Well?” She asked, “Don’t you like it?” She gestured down to it, her pinky finger touching the top of the ankle. At least it did look intriguing. It was made of thick red metal that looked strong and sleek. Shiny black gears peaked out of the sides. It had the symbol of the Polem painted on the ankle and just below the knee. On the shin was painted a shiny gold stripe with a black gear pattern at the bottom. It looked graceful, despite being a metal leg. 

“I like the way it looks,” Lavinia stated trying hard not to lie.

The medic smiled at her answer, but Lavinia could tell that she knew it wasn’t the full truth. “Well then, let’s put it on shall we?”

She took in a sigh, knowing that it would be her last real human breath. She realized as the medic picked up the leg and put it to her stub that she would be part automaton now. The idea made her shiver, she didn’t want to be one of those mechanical pests, getting in the way of everyone's lives when they didn’t even have a life at all.

“Get ready,” the medic warned, “this is going to hurt a bit.” Lavinia almost laughed. If only Kovid said that before he chopped off one of her legs. She didn’t expect it to hurt. Not that much at least. Or if it did, she didn’t think that would shake her.

It was excruciating. It was like there was a fire stuck in her leg, trying to get out. It was like crashing into the sun. It wasn’t just her leg either, it was her whole body. The world around her went black, and she could hear herself screaming and nothing else. For a second, she thought she was going to die. It was too painful for her to live on, she wanted to die. 

Then in an instant, it was all gone. The world went back to normal, well as normal as it could be. She felt no lingering pain, in fact the pain she had been in before the leg was on was completely gone. The strangest part was, it felt like she had a leg again, like the empty spot where her leg had been was filled again. Both the medic and her brothers looked completely dumbfounded. “It, I,” the medic tried to say, stuttering with every syllable, “It wasn’t supposed to hurt that bad.” 

Lavinia let out a scornful laugh. “It wasn’t supposed to hurt that bad?” she asked, “You just put me through that and the only thing you have to say is, ‘it wasn’t supposed to hurt that bad?’” Her eyes locked in a sickening glare. 

“I’m sorry?” The medic said, but it sounded like a question. “I didn’t-”

“You should be fired,” Lavinia responded, “Let a scholli take your place.” The medic looked back at Lavinia with the same fear she saw in almost everyone’s eyes. People were wimps, and this proved it. With that she stood up, a bit shaky at first but still solid, and walked out.

Walking felt strange, it was like Lavinia’s mind wanted it to hurt, but it didn’t. It was like, because the mechanical leg felt the same, Lavinia’s mind was creating artificial pain. She gulped, and tried to keep walking, ignoring the looks from people she passed when they saw her leg peeking out from the bottom of her hospital gown. As she went to retrieve the clothing that they were giving her for her return home, she glared at the nurses that glanced down at her feet, one bare and one red metal.

It wasn’t until she went outside that she realized her brothers had followed her. “So, why were you so angry in there?” Howard asked, running his fingers through his hair again. She could see little dandruff flakes fall onto his fingers.

“I get angry,” She mumbled, before turning around and at a much higher volume shouting, “Deal with it!” 

She wanted Howard and Derek to look intimidated. They looked indifferent, of course they did. When she got to the Polem housing buildings, and took a right to the in-training building she expected them to leave. They didn’t. When she walked inside, then took a right up the stairs she expected them to leave. They didn't. When she took a left, then went down the hall to her room she expected them to leave. They didn’t. When she pulled a key off of a string around her neck and opened the door she asked them to leave. They still didn’t. 

Lavinia opened the door and went inside, quickly slamming it shut and locking it so that they couldn’t get in. Then she sighed, and flopped onto her bed. It was a rickety old box of dust with a pillow on it. Or, at least that’s what it felt like, since the mattress seemed to cough whenever you moved on it. She absentmindedly fiddled with one of the tiny gears on her new leg. That’s when she heard a little clicking noise and her door opened.

“Wow!” Derek said, a picklock in his hand. “You’ve got this place all to yourself!”

To her annoyance he and Howard had both walked into the room, their heads turning up and down in amazement. Really her room wasn’t much. A bed, a cabinet, a closet, and a stove. Lavinia had a picture up above her bed. An old painting of a tree Olive had made for her , when she was Lavinia’s age. She didn’t really know why she had kept it up all this time, maybe Olive was at least good at painting. 

“I won’t have it for much longer,” Lavinia informed, looking up at her ceiling. “Once I get my first mission, I’ll be transfered to one of the other buildings. A lot of the other Polems have already moved out I’m sure.”

“Will you still have your own room?” Derek asked, opening one of her drawers full of weapons. 

She replied with a scoff to her voice, “Of course. It’ll be bigger and nicer.”

“Lucky!” Howard shouted. “We have to share a room with six other kids!”

“I mean, it’s not so bad,” Derek continued the thought, “Clairissa is part of our group, and she’s-”

He was cut off by a loud knock on the door. Lavinia couldn’t have been more pleased to have a visitor. Usually, she hate getting a knock at her door, but now it was a blessing. When she opened it, an Ypyre messenger stood on the other side. He was short and small looking with curly blonde hair that was messy and covered in dust. He had no shirt on, exposing the mark of the Ypyre that had made him a slave, and his pants were much too loose and baggy. The only thing holding them up were dark red suspenders that went up over his bare chest. Lavinia hadn’t ever seen this one, and she looked down at him with her scariest glare. New Ypyres could be unpredictable, and she wanted to show the animal who the master was. He looked more frightened than she thought he would, and that pleased her. Lavinia took the note and watched him leave. As he turned around she could see long red whip marks covering his back. 

Lavinia shut the door again and opened her note. She got messages often, so she had never been too formal opening notes, but she could see that her brothers were extremely excited by this note. They had probably never been sent a message before, it must have thrilled them to see their sister get one.

Lavinia read over it, squinting her eyes to make sure she didn’t miss anything.

Lavinia, Polem #203  
King Osmand would like a word with you. Please come to the meeting hall immediately.   
Queen Valorie

Lavinia couldn’t go with Derek and Howard, so she told them to stay in her room, or go somewhere else. It didn’t work. Twenty minutes later they followed her in through the castle doors, and didn’t stop following her until she made it to the King’s meeting hall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don’t be turned off by how dang annoying Lavinia is, she won’t be like this forever I swear.

**Author's Note:**

> So this prologue is kinda depressing, but I swear this series isn’t just Lavinia moping all the time. If you liked this chapter please comment.


End file.
